St. Augustine - America's Oldest City (1565)

November

If you would have told us, before we left Bend in September, that Florida would be the favorite state of our journey - we would have called you crazy! St. Augustine was a perfect location for our first stop in Florida. This city holds the crown as the oldest town in the United States, settled in 1565 by Spanish settlers. We stayed just outside of town at Bryn Mawr RV resort. Little did we know that this is one of the only RV parks on the Florida Atlantic coast that has immediate access to the ocean. Even better, it is one of a handful of Florida beaches which allowed us to bring Sandie on the Beach!

This stop also proved to be the one where we realized it was okay to stay in one place for a while and enjoy ourselves! We only had planned for a week here, so staying longer meant being flexible (a.k.a. willing to move 5 times while we stayed there). Other than the game of musical parking spots, it was a great time. We spent as much time on the sand as possible, with the boys doing a little surfing, body boarding, and skim boarding. We even got to celebrate Keegan’s 12th in this beautiful area. He loved having a zoom birthday celebration with a few buddies:).

For Thanksgiving, we decided to do a home cooked meal (actually, pre-cooked by Whole Foods). On our way to Jacksonville to pick up the feast, we ran into our first major mechanical problem with the truck. Fortunately the failure occurred without the 5th wheel behind us, but the left front brake seized. When the caliper failed, it clamped down on the brake forcing us to pull over in a random parking lot, wondering what we were going to do on the night before Thanksgiving. God was watching over us that night. Less than a half-mile away, we found a Tires Plus, run by a manager who refused to close his shop until he fixed our truck. I'm not sure what we would have done without him as Sandie was back in the RV, and we were looking at a long night tracking down a rental vehicle.

Another memorable part of our visit to St. Augustine included witnessing our first rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center. The SpaceX Dragon, manned space mission launch on November 15th was clearly visible from our beach about 60 miles away. My old friend from flight school, CDR Victor Glover, was on this mission - so cool to watch him accelerate into orbit! We followed this up by celebrating Keegan‘s 12th birthday with an in-person visit to the Kennedy Space Center. We were so impressed by this visit - what a great educational experience for the boys (and us!). We learned so much about the space program, its evolution, and got up close and personal with the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

In addition to the Kennedy Space Center, we celebrated Keegan’s birthday at a beautiful marina restaurant in New Smyrna. I took the boys to the Pirate Museum in St Augustine as well for a two day birthday celebration!

After nearly 3 weeks at St. Augustine, we packed up Big Bend, preparing for what the boys thought would be a 9 hour journey to the Florida pan-handle. Little did they know, we'd be making a 1-week pit stop at the most unlikely place to visit during a pandemic.

We thank everyone for the beautiful holiday cards. We are sad we did not get a card out this season. We hope you enjoy our holiday pic!